> But that has an established meaning, namely 1900-1909.
I'm not going to claim to know the history of how terminology develops. But I don't think I have ever come across someone using "XX00s" to refer solely to the first 10 years of that time period.
The general rule of thumb for reading numbers is to treat every trailing 0 as a marker of an insignificant figure, so a number like "1,000,000" is presumed to have 1 significant figure and not 6. By this rule, the most natural interpretation of 1900s is that it encompasses 1900-1999.
I'm not going to claim to know the history of how terminology develops. But I don't think I have ever come across someone using "XX00s" to refer solely to the first 10 years of that time period.
The general rule of thumb for reading numbers is to treat every trailing 0 as a marker of an insignificant figure, so a number like "1,000,000" is presumed to have 1 significant figure and not 6. By this rule, the most natural interpretation of 1900s is that it encompasses 1900-1999.